Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Pay It Off
As long you keep them entertained and intrigued, audiences can be quite
forgiving when it comes to waiting for all to become clear. But their pa-
tience does have its limits, and they do expect that at some point in the
story, you will fill in the expository gaps, or provide enough clues for them
to do so on their own.
There are several dangers in waiting too long to make your plot fully
comprehensible. The first is that the audience gets tired of waiting, be-
comes unsure that you will ever clear things up, and gives up on your
story. The second is that your plot details, after being teased, withheld, and
built up for so long, ultimately disappoint once they're revealed. The pay-
off ends up not matching the extended setup.
This is something
The Terminator
gets very right. When Reese puts the
very last piece of the puzzle in place for Sarah and the audience, it isn't just
another fact—it's a very personal and mind-blowing one:
… there was one man … who taught us to fight. To storm the wire
of the camps. To smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He
turned it around … he brought us back from the brink.
His name is Connor, John Connor. Your son, Sarah. Your unborn
son.
Wow. A blockbuster revelation
and
an emotional punch to the gut to top
off a mystery that's been nagging at the audience since the first few
minutes:
Why is this thing trying to kill her?
From this point on the story is startlingly “clean” by comparison. There
are no more open questions, except the main one: How can Sarah pos-
sibly survive this ordeal?
Contrast the first fifteen minutes of these three entertainment experien-
ces:
Metal Gear Solid 2, Uncharted 2
, and
The Terminator
. The first blasts
you with too much information right off the bat, while the other two drip
feed you, making you hungry for more.
